"When Santos narrated his tragic story about his son Gideon, I was horrified that incidents such as these take place in this day and age and that there is not enough being done to stop child sacrifice. I was determined to try to help in any way I could to try and bring attention to child sacrifice and put a final end to it. This inhumane act destroys families and communities across Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes Region, whilst the perpetrators of this crime are free to live their lives as though nothing happened due to the fact that child sacrifice is not specifically punishable under the Ugandan constitution. The more people that are involved in putting an end to this brutal practice, the faster we can all say that child sacrifice no longer exists in Uganda".

-Samara Madhvani, Age 16, Creator and Editor of the Gideon Foundation Website

December 19th 2006 was just another ordinary day for Santos John and Leah Labeja, a couple who lives in Soroti, Uganda—until they found the mutilated body of their four-year-old son Gideon. A man who lived on Santo’s property had lured Gideon away from his house using a musical Christmas card. He cut off Gideon’s tongue and killed the child. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual case and there have been over sixty reported cases of child sacrifice and over a hundred cases of missing children in Uganda over the last three years.

Child sacrifice has recently become a rising issue in Uganda, but this brutal practise has deep antecedents in Ugandan culture. Shockingly, elitists such as medical doctors, well-to-do tycoons, politicians, journalists wallow in the quagmire of this backwardness of demon worships and are involved with the practices of occultism and ritual murders in order to get economic prosperity, blessings and luck’ from the underworld. The clients themselves kill the children and take their body parts to the witchdoctor who performs the rituals and calls on the spirits of the dead. Although the police often catch the murderers and those involved with sacrificing children, they are usually let free as there is no law under the constitution in Uganda, which directly condemns and punishes them. The law condemning those involved with witchcraft does not touch on child sacrifice and has hardly been used in Uganda’s law courts. Santos aims to eventually pass a bill that punishes those involved in any way with ritualistic child sacrifice.

"My own four-year old son became a victim of child sacrifice on 19th December 2006. Perpetrators of this brutal crime use every cunning method to lure innocent little children or even unsuspecting adults to their death without raising the slightest suspicion in anyone’s mind. The killer of my son admitted that he used to play with Gideon often enough, to make it easier for him to lure Gideon into his trap which would result in him being initiated into the demon kingdom. It is tragic that one would believe and actually carry out such a thing, and I hope that no other parents would experience the pain and heartbreak that my family and I went through and go through every day."